Debi Gliori

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Best bun, ever.

Those of you who have been following this blog as it takes its infant steps across the digital carpet* may have noticed that it has had a makeover recently. Before then, I was reduced to weeping and swearing like a Clydeside docker at my laptop. What the hell was a widget? How was I supposed to know if I needed to tag things, or use a standard format and how come my illustrations wouldn’t fit on the welcome page?

A friend helpfully pointed out that my blog looked a bit corporate, then confessed that she hadn’t a clue how to help make it look better. Cheers, mate. Other friends made soothing sounds and muttered something encouraging about how it was the content, not the packaging that counted, but…och. I mean OCHHHHHH. I’m supposed to have a degree in graphic design and illustration for heaven’s sake. So what if it was handed out in a bygone age when we ( I kid you not) learned our typography skills by slotting little tiny metal legs with individual letters impressed on one end into other metal slotty things ( technical term) which were, in turn, slotted into big metal clampy things ( another arcane technical term) and then inked up and slooowwwwly thudded down onto bits of paper. At which point, I’d invariably discover that I’d put the d or the p or the q or the b round the wrong way. And out it would all come, and I’d begin again. Oh, how we suffered, just to put together one single paragraph of type. This single post, back then, would’ve taken three miserable afternoons in the Case Room, enduring the wrath and scorn of the grumpy printer whose karmic destiny it was to instil the rudiments of typography in a group of delinquent art students. Poor man.

Where was I? Ah, yes. Making my WordPress blog look good. So. On I went, trying to ignore the mess of the home page, the fact that I seemed to have spawned not one, but three blogs and the feeling that I was adrift in a sea of technical jargon, surrounded by much evidence that every single other person using this site appeared to be terrifyingly accomplished, design-savvy IT gurus. I’d landed on WordPress like a newbie at Wimbledon armed with nothing other than a burning ambition to play using an old, saggy Slazenger. Oh…Miss Joan Hunter Dunn. Oh, do shut up, Gliori.

Until…an email arrived from my friend the Bookwitch. Being a Witch, and not just a common-or-garden Witch, but a witch who blogs, she had divined that I was making a mess of my attempts to prettify my blog. And offered help. Real, practical help. Hers plus the assistance of her husband, the Resident IT Wizard.

Really? I mean, why would you want to be trapped in your own gorgeous sunroom with a waffling, flapping and deeply confused illustrator who can barely recall her own password, let alone decide what template she’d like to use on her new blog? Why? This, friends and neighbours, is an important question. Why would you do this to yourself?

I think the answer lies in kindness, in all of us working together, sharing skills, giving up of our most precious commodity ( time) and also, I may be alone in thinking this, but it was fun. I really enjoyed spending an afternoon in the company of a BookWitch and an IT Wizard. We talked of many things ; politics ( how could we not?) long-distance walking, far-flung daughters, how long a kilo of pasta can stave off starvation and finally, of buns. Vanilla tea was poured, followed by a plate of buns.

Ohhhhhhhhh. The buns. Imagine, if you will, a brioche-type dough, but denser than that. A reinforced bread/cake hybrid. Imagine it baked to a shyly golden hue, then cooled and its little top sliced off. Imagine it is then gently filled with a grainy paste, something like marzipan ( I love the old word ‘Marchpane’ for this sweetmeat) but far more granular. On top of this is piled a pillowy, billowy cloud of whipped cream, whereupon the little lid is replaced on top.

Behold. The Bookwitch’s Lent bun. My illustration doesn’t even come close to doing it justice. A thousand thankyous to you and your husband for making my day. It was, as the young people say, MIGHTY.